Gunpla Build - High Grade GM Sniper II Followup

In 2019 and 2020, I built a number of model kits without finishing my writeups on them, and without doing any photo shoots. I got a whole bunch of new kits for the holidays, and one of my short term New’s Years resolutions was to go back and revisit these older kits before building anything new. I decided to tackle them in the order I built them. Here then is my followup on the High Grade GM Sniper II, which I built back in late March of 2020.

Of all the model kits I built in early 2020, the GM Sniper II was the one I looked forward to the most. And yet, I didn’t write anything about it. Not a single post. I had build photos. I wrote drafts (which I then somehow lost?) But I never published anything about the kit.

The reason was simple - I built too many kits too quickly, and I got burnt out. Even during the build of the GM Sniper II, I wanted to have nothing to do with model kits for while. I largely built it because it was the last Gunpla on my stack, and I wanted to knock them all out before taking a “building break”¹.

Also, the pandemic kind of happened. Model kits were the last thing on my mind during the spring and summer.

What this means is that I had to write two build posts in December, about a build I did all the way back in March, and then backdate both of them. It was not easy to look at old photos and try to figure out what I was trying to convey, nor was it easy to try and remember how specific parts of the build went. Lesson learned on my part - either write build posts right away, or don’t write them at all.

Let’s move on to the photos and poses.

First off, the GM Sniper II looks fantastic. Yes, as a GM variant, it is still a very blocky design, but it has just enough extra flourishes - the color, the helmet, the thrusters - to make it look sleek, powerful, and efficient. This may be a GM, but this isn’t cannon fodder².

Articulation

The articulation on the GM Sniper II is highly variable. All of it is, as the very least, “good enough”. Some of it is “great”. It all depends on which part we’re talking about.

Starting from the top and working down, the head is very close to the torso. It can move side to side, but there is some resistance as the two body parts scrape together. It can tilt up slightly, but only when looking straight ahead (though you can help out a bit by talking it backward).

The arms are perfectly average in their range. They don’t get quite as much bend as a modern kit, which made some poses tricky to pull off. On the plus side, the shoulders are small, so they don’t get in the way of the arms or the weapons.

Unfortunately, the hands are very loose. The ball joint on each one is too small for the arm sockets. I had a lot of problems keeping the right hand in particular from falling out, and since that is the one which holds the rifle, well …

Looking at the torso, it is very cramped down there. Like with the head, parts are liable to scrape against each other. Sometimes you need to straighten out the skirt armor in order to allow the torso to rotate (as you can see in the photo above, it has no trouble pulling off a backward bend. Or a forward one).

The legs are by far the most articulate section of the model. Like the Gundam Barbatos, they easily rotate out to the sides, which makes many standing positions easier to perform.

The knee bend is good, but not earth shattering:

The GM Sniper II’s best and most unique³ bit of articulation is in its ankles. You can move the foot 360 degrees:

This is the key feature that allows the model to do good crouching poses. This is generally a problem for High Grade model kits, which often have little articulation around the knee. At best these kits can hope for a kneeling pose like this:

But with the GM Sniper II, you can instead get a pose like this:

Nice and straight (and stable!). You can easily get a solid shooting pose with that.

But guess what? You don’t have to! You can still get a straight shooting pose without rotating the foot out? Don’t believe me? Just watch:

Can you see why? Look closely at the legs. Here’s another photo with a different angle:

Do you see it? When the foot is flexed all the way down/out, the toe becomes level with the knee. This absolutely has to be intentional, and I must admit that I find it extremely clever.

Beam Saber

The GM Sniper II comes beam saber blades that are noticeably shorter than most, which means that they are actually the right size. What I mean is that most 1/144th scale models are shipped with beam blades that are far too long⁴. These feel like the perfect size.

We never see the GM Sniper II use a beam saber during the War in the Pocket OVA, but it looks great with them.

Or you can get a little goofy and make it look like an air traffic controller:

SMG

The design of this gun is much like the GM Sniper II itself - compact, simple, efficient.

Far too often, mobile suit guns either look like overgrown machine pistols, or they look too long to feasibly hold in one hand. This one looks just right, and I wish this style was more common across the Gundam metaseries.

Sniper Rifle

The rifle itself is a single piece, without gimmicks. But it looks great, and it fits well in the hand. It is very easy to pose the model without the rifle getting in the way, and it isn’t heavy enough to throw the model off balance.

One minor gripe I have is that the model’s holding hands are … precise. The model’s guns each have a small tab on the grip, which locks into a notch inside the hand:

This ensures a snug and secure fit. It also means that the guns will only fit into a hand if it has that this notch.

As it turns out, the only two pairs of hands that have the notch are the model’s two trigger-finger hands (yes, it has two trigger-finger hands. I don’t know why). That means you can’t hold the rifle in any of the the left hands, or in the right “closed fist” hand.

And in case you still don’t believe me, a comparison:

Mobile Worker

Here is the finished Mobile Worker:

Everything you see on here that isn’t orange in color was hand painted, including the big red sirens. It was a pain to do, but in the end it looks amazing. It is made out of far more pieces than it looks, which is a testament to how far good detailing work can go.

he worker comes with extra parts for customization, including loader arms:

You also get alternate head lamps:

It’s one thing to include this mobile worker in the box. It’s another to give it multiple optional parts. Even if they just scrapped the extra arms and lights, that might have been enough extra plastic to dedicate to adding a kickstand to the shield. Speaking of which …

Propping up the Shield

I mentioned this in a build post, but the High Grade version of the GM Sniper II’s shield cannot be propped up. So I figured out how to do it myself with a piece of a runner:

This is one of my favorite pose ideas for any mobile suit ever. I love when a mecha has a practical, useful shield, and it doesn’t get more practical and useful than this:

Yeah, I went a little overboard. Couldn’t help myself:

Conclusion

This model looks effortlessly cool, it poses easily, and it is sturdy (save for the hands). It was extremely fun to pose this and take pictures (I got over 70 photos in a single evening). I may have built it while feeling burnt out, but the end result is easily become one of my favorite models on my shelf.

Other Thoughts

Because I think the GM Sniper II looks so much like a police mecha, I staged a little scene, in which our hero and a partner bust an illegal Lego smuggling operation. This took a while, but it was a lot of fun: